Fermented pickles, one jar at a time.

My constant efforts to learn from prior years' mistakes is finally starting to pay off, if only in a small way.  This year I planted my cucumbers early enough that they did not succumb to Powdery Mildew before I'd gotten more than five or six of them!  Last year I tried them as a succession crop after my peas.  I had enough deformed cukes to turn into a few pints of relish, but that was about it :(  The year before that I'd gotten them in early enough that the individual plants produced well, but since it was my first year with the garden, I'd gone small (only four plants), and didn't have enough for preserving.

This year I'm still not quite where I want to be (I don't think), but it's definitely an improvement!  I've got maybe 28 plants, and at the moment I'm averaging 2-4 pickle-sized cucumbers a day.  This is still well off of the several pounds that most recipes call for, but since I've been getting this yield for about two weeks now, it's still an improvement!  I may not be able to put up pickles to last us the year, but I'll certainly be able to provide us with enough for the summer.   

I know I could've gone with classic refrigerator pickles, but I've been wanting to try fermented pickles, and since they also lend themselves well to very small batches, I went with those.  I adapted Sally Fallon's recipe from Nourishing Traditions.  As far as I can tell, the main difference between her technique and the classic fermented pickle technique is that she adds a few tablespoons of whey to the saltwater brine as a kick-starter, and to ensure that the right kind of bacteria gets a foothold before anything nasty has a chance to set in.

• As many cucumbers as will fit in a quart mason jar (sliced, spears, or whole)
• 2 cloves garlic, crushed
• 2T yellow mustard seed
• 1 head of dill seeds or rough equivalent
• 2c water + 2t salt 
• 4T whey

Pack everything into the jar.  If you think it will stay in layers then go ahead and add ingredients in layers - I find everything settles to the bottom anyway, so I don't bother.  Add whey, then salt water, leaving about 1 inch of room at the top of the bottle.  Cap tightly, and leave at room temperature for two to three days, or until you like the flavor.  Loosen the cap once or twice a day to "burp" the jar, or you may end up with a mess of broken glass!  When it's where you want it, put it in the fridge.

So far I've had really good luck!  Mine have been ready to go into the fridge in about two days, because it's been so hot.  It really is important to let the excess gas out periodically, because even if your jars don't explode, you end up with carbonated pickles - and that's just weird.  Also, expect the brine to start getting cloudy after the first day.  With vinegar pickles cloudy brine is a sign of spoilage, but with fermented pickles it's normal.  It's interesting to watch the progression!  The first day they're still bright cucumber green.  The second day the color starts to change.  By the time they're done they're pickle-colored!  The jar on the left has just been started - the jar on the right is about to go into the fridge.  I'm happy eating the spears right out of the jar, but my son only likes them on sandwiches.  Give them a shot and let me know how they turn out!

Not how I wanted to spend my day!

 This is not what my kitchen normally looks like - really, it's not!

 This is not what my living room normally looks like either.

 I mean, I'm the first to admit that housekeeping is not generally my highest priority....

 but I'm not usually this bad!

Here's the culprit.  I'd told our maintenance department that the door seal on my fridge was torn, could they please come repair it.  They decided to replace the fridge instead.  Right then!  On zero notice we suddenly had to hustle most of the furniture in the kitchen into the living room so that they could get the new fridge in.  The kitchen is one of the places we put things that Scarlett isn't allowed to have, so the density of "stuff" in there is pretty high.

On the plus side, the new fridge seems to be slightly larger than the old one!  This is good.  The old one was so short that you couldn't fit a two-liter bottle on the tallest shelf.  I may have enough room to try that "Keep a Week's Worth of Bread Dough in the Fridge" thing!

What's going on in the garden

 

Some of the raspberries are finally starting to come ripe - although I'll be lucky if I get to them before the critters do!

I have a guest on my sage

Some of my broccoli is ready to eat.  Unfortunately one plant doesn't give enough for a whole meal.  I guess I'll just have to eat this all by myself.  Darn!

And finally, I am starting to see tomatoes!

Some more finished yarn

These 2oz combed tops I've been using to test colorways spin up very quickly!  This is the red from the top I showed you here.  This one is a one-off - I messed up while I was mixing the dyes in such a way that I knew I'd made a mistake, but couldn't tell you exactly what I'd done wrong, so sadly, this mistake is not repeatable.

This is the yarn from the yellow top that I forgot to take a photo of.  Rather, I thought I had already taken photos of it.  I try to wait until I've got a pic of the dyed fiber before I spin it up, just for record-keeping purposes.  Oh well - I guess I'll have to take the roving photo next time I dye this colorway.

This is what the red at the top of the page was supposed to look like.  Now that the top has a photo I can spin this and see how I like the yarn.

This is my first shot at "purples," but it's turned out more blue than I wanted.  I have another version cooking right now (along with "oranges"), so I should have something less blue and more purple to show you next time.

So *that's* where I put her!

Selling at the Farmer's Market

I love my local farmer's market.  It's not that big, but there's a lot of food, and there's frequently live music!  They also reserve a few spots for Not Food.  This year I decided to try and sell my jewelry and wool/yarn at the farmer's market.  I don't really care if I don't sell very much.  I'm aiming for greater exposure rather than stellar sales, although that would be nice!

This farmer's market is Thursdays from 11-2 in downtown Hartford,  in the grassy courtyard of an old factory that has been turned into apartments and a community center.  The courtyard is where they have the community gardens, and it's nice to see those raised beds full of veggies!

Most of the foot traffic is lunch traffic from the surrounding businesses.  The farmer's market sets out picnic tables, and there are several vendors who sell prepared food, as well as a big catering truck that parks itself right outside the gates.  While I might not expect people who came to shop for food to be interested in jewelry, it's not such a far stretch for the business people.

My first day was last week (I'm set up for about every other week), but I ended up running late because DH had made an orthodontist appointment for that morning, and he ended up getting home about 5 minutes before it opened.  I'm only about 10 minutes away, but this was not how I'd wanted to start!  Fortunately this wasn't a huge deal - I was not the only one setting up late.  I can't wait for my son to graduate so he can come help me set up and break down - schlepping all my stuff from the parking lot to my spot on the other side of the courtyards seemed to take forever!

 My setup usually looks much nicer than this!  Unfortunately Elaine (my business partner) has our table coverings, and I'd forgotten to take one home with me when we did our annual Big Show at the beginning of May.  Of course since table coverings are usually something I don't have to think about, it didn't occur to me until the night before that I didn't have one!  In a truly sad act of desperation, I used the green polar fleece blanket we keep on our sofa.  It was a better choice than the Dora blanket.  Next time I will find something nicer, with better coverage.  At a normal craft show we would have more jewelry, because Elaine's would be out as well, and two additional small tables.  And no yarn, of course.  I think it came out OK, but Elaine is much better at figuring out where everything should go than I am.  I'll just have to continue to tweak things.

I ended up next to a booth run by a pair of elderly women from Bosnia, who sell knitted and crocheted items.   I'd brought my spinning wheel, and they both seemed to get a kick out of it :)  Their English wasn't great, but they communicated their approval easily enough.  One of them stood watching me spin for quite a while, and eventually asked how much my wheel had cost (about $600 12 years ago), and seemed to think it was a reasonable price.


The spinning wheel got a lot of attention, as I had hoped it would!  I got a lot of people asking questions about the wool and yarn, so that was gratifying.  I had many nice conversations with people - one of whom was telling me about her sister-in-law, who raises Shetland sheep in Vermont.  As she was describing the operation, it occurred to me that I had heard this story before - her sister-in-law had done a program on Shetland sheep for the Nutmeg Spinner's Guild, when I was still an active member!  Small world!  A few people with kids stopped for a bit so their kids could watch the spinning.  Several people wanted to know if I was going to be there next/every week, which I take as a good sign! 

I only sold one small piece, and that was to one of the other vendors.  I hadn't expected to sell anything at all my first day, so this was a plus!  It covered my booth fee, which is the important thing.  After all, most people don't go to a small farmer's market like this expecting to find jewelry and craft supplies.  I'll need to be there more regularly, then people will expect me to be there and bring money.  I even had a couple people write down what dates I'd be there next!  I know other people's plans rarely pan out in my favor, but if they're interested enough to write the info down it shows that there's enough interest for it to be worth it to me to continue to show up.

My spinning assistant :)